Please don't latinize the Byzantine Rite - don't promote the rosary there
Young fogey
Shipmate Posts: 10
‘The rosary is wonderful: why can’t we promote it among all Christians?’ The Byzantine Rite used by Orthodox and some Catholic churches has its own devotions to Mary including its own version of the Hail Mary: ‘Rejoice, O virgin Mother of God, Mary full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, for thou hast borne the Saviour of our souls.’ There are long litany-like akathists and canons. There is also the prayer rope counting the Jesus Prayer, ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner’, but unlike the Roman rosary it’s not a lay devotion at home and in the parishes but a monastic practice. Like the Stations of the Cross, the rosary developed in the Roman Church after the split with the Orthodox. St. Dominic introduced it.
Private prayer can be anything you want. Rite controls what you do in church, to keep good order and to respect various cultures. The Eastern rites, such as the best known among them, the Byzantine Rite, are entirely Catholic as they are. Eastern Catholic churches in their public practice are supposed to model Orthodox and other Eastern Christian life in a reunited church. Members of the Eastern churches do NOT need to adopt Roman Rite devotions in order to be Catholic!
‘But Our Lady says so! She ordered it at Fatima! Russia must be consecrated!’ Approved private revelation such as apparitions is not Catholic doctrine. You don’t have to believe it. Russia was consecrated when St. Vladimir was baptized. The last thing we want to show the Russians is bishops of a foreign church and rite seeming to claim ownership of their country. That wouldn’t reflect our teachings.
Respect for rites goes both ways. If you want to use the rosary in your private prayer, you need not pretend it’s Eastern by byzantinizing it. There is more than one good original Western version of it, such as this and the better known version.
DEUS, cuius Unigenitus per vitam, mortem et resurrectionem suam nobis salutis aeternae praemia comparavit, concede, quaesumus: ut haec mysteria sacratissimo beatae Mariae Virginis Rosario recolentes, et imitemur quod continent, et quod promittunt assequamur. Per eundem Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen.
No matter how you prefer to pray privately, God loves you and may he bless you!
Private prayer can be anything you want. Rite controls what you do in church, to keep good order and to respect various cultures. The Eastern rites, such as the best known among them, the Byzantine Rite, are entirely Catholic as they are. Eastern Catholic churches in their public practice are supposed to model Orthodox and other Eastern Christian life in a reunited church. Members of the Eastern churches do NOT need to adopt Roman Rite devotions in order to be Catholic!
‘But Our Lady says so! She ordered it at Fatima! Russia must be consecrated!’ Approved private revelation such as apparitions is not Catholic doctrine. You don’t have to believe it. Russia was consecrated when St. Vladimir was baptized. The last thing we want to show the Russians is bishops of a foreign church and rite seeming to claim ownership of their country. That wouldn’t reflect our teachings.
Respect for rites goes both ways. If you want to use the rosary in your private prayer, you need not pretend it’s Eastern by byzantinizing it. There is more than one good original Western version of it, such as this and the better known version.
DEUS, cuius Unigenitus per vitam, mortem et resurrectionem suam nobis salutis aeternae praemia comparavit, concede, quaesumus: ut haec mysteria sacratissimo beatae Mariae Virginis Rosario recolentes, et imitemur quod continent, et quod promittunt assequamur. Per eundem Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen.
No matter how you prefer to pray privately, God loves you and may he bless you!
Comments
Presumably you would not have Latin Rite Catholics use the Jesus Prayer or any other Eastern devotion either. Would you ban ikons in Western churches too?
All probably true, but my point is that you would more profitably be directing your admonitions to the Byzantine Christians who might be tempted to follow the westerners.
As such, your comments ate kinda like the woman who yells at her husband's secretary for flirting with him, rather than simply asking her husband to remain faithful. If the request for her husband's loyalty doesn't work, she's got bigger problems in her marriage than just the secretary
@Young fogey - it would be helpful to provide an English translation, as not all of us are fluent in Latin...
Thanks!
There is more than one good original Western version of the rosary, such as this and the better known version.
I'm not saying Byzantine Christians don't read this board. I'm saying that if you think a particular group of people have an obligation to avoid a certain practice, then it makes the most sense to address your appeal to them. Not to people from another faith that is perfectly fine with thelr adherents promoting the practice.
I do sympathise to an extent with what you say, inasmuch that it annoys me (as an Anglican) to have so much Roman Catholic liturgical material 'imported' (at the church I attend) into what is an already satisfactory (IMHO) liturgy!
That's perhaps a good subject for a more general thread...
The Vatican used to put pressure on Eastern Rite churches to Latinize, especially in areas where Eastern Rite Christians were being ruled by Roman Catholic monarchs (as in the parts of Ukraine that were ruled by Poland-Lithuania or the Hapsburgs) or in places where Western Christianity was the norm that Eastern-Rite Catholics had migrated to and set up their own parishes (in the US, Eastern Rite Catholic priests were prevented from marrying for quite some time despite being allowed to do so in the East). I'm not sure if it was during Vatican II or earlier, but eventually the Vatican started talking about preserving the distinctive liturgical customs of each of the Eastern churches in communion with Rome. I don't know how far the Vatican has actually gone in terms of enforcing a reversal of previous Latinization of Eastern Churches. I would imagine that in some parts of the world where being in communion with Rome vs. Constantinople and/or Moscow is tied up with nationalism (like Ukraine), Eastern-Rite Catholics may want to adhere to Western customs because it reinforces their distinctiveness from what they might perceive as Russian (or other) imperialism. Of course, Orthodox in Ukraine in communion with the Moscow or Kiev patriarchates might see Latinized practices in Eastern Catholic churches as remnants of the imperialism of Roman Catholic powers in the past.
Also, as stated, the revelations at Fatima were said by Sister Lucia, one of their recipients, to include a command to consecrate Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary - there is some debate as to whether any Pope actually did this or not or whether he should have done or still needs to do so - and this needs to be understood in the context of the nationalistic, religious, and ideological conflicts of the period around World War I and the Russian Revolution. Over 100 years later, some people are still influenced by the secular repercussions of those events when they talk of the Consecration of Russia, but others are just very fervent Marian devotees who know very little about the history of why Roman Catholics in 1917 and the period after might expect the Blessed Mother to be particularly concerned about Russia.
As for Fatima ..... least said etc.
The latter is particularly interesting. The building is a former Anglican building, whose previous occupants were of a rather low-church persuasion. This makes the presence of stations of the Cross, statues of Latin Catholic devotions, (including Our Lady of Lourdes), and rosary beads hanging from various proturberances rather interesting.
These are almost certainly latinisations that were once adopted by the Ukrainan Catholics. However, their use no longer seems to be in evidence. The statues are there but nobody prays or lights candles before them. I have never seen the rosary beads used, and if there is anything distinctive about the Liturgy at all, it is that it is heavily abbreviated and no incense is used.
My suspicion is that the latinisations might have been uprooted during the time of Fr Gregory Woolfenden, who later became Orthodox and served in the Diocese of Sourozh, where he became known for his liturgical study and worskhops, and where he distributed notes to the clergy. Some of those notes have been compiled and published more recently in this volume.
An anomaly that seems to be the norm in a lot of Italian churches at some point in the late afternoon. I don't loiter in Roman Catholic Churches much outside Italy, so I can't comment on elsewhere.
Its can be found in the UK before Mass especially in May in some places.
Its also not unknown for people to gather in the funeral home the day before the funeral to pray the Rosary.
Interestingly its a form of communal prayer that is almost invariably lay led, and in the vernacular when the formal liturgy was in Latin.
Declining, though.
Here the real Latinisation challenges are at the priest-training level, where there are no North American seminaries (in Ottawa, there is a UC seminary, whose musical programme draws them in) and a very high intermarriage rate among younger members, who often drift by default to Latin parishes on account of activities for their kids-- eastern Catholics in medium-sized and smaller centres usually end up as Latins, although they're not unknown in UCC, Anglican, and JW churches.
In Canada, the middle eastern churches still have a continuous immigrant stream to keep things lively, but the older Slavic Byzantine churches do not-- the Slovak eparchate is down to 4,000 members (maybe) from 30,000 40 years ago, and isn't going to be around forever. The Melkites and the Copts draw in converts, but the Ukrainians and Slovaks don't, and in a multicultural and mingling society, that's a slow-death warrant, rosaries or no rosaries.
'Cross-contamination' if this is what we are thinking of, happens both ways.
Someone asked about icons in Latin rite churches. Many, many Latin rite churches will have a copy of the icon known as Our Lady of Perpetual Succour/Help, the original of which is in a Polish church just behind St Mary Major in Rome.
I'm thinking ,however, principally of Latin rite churches in Eastern Europe,think just of the famous icon (again a Polish connection) of our Lady of Jasna Gora. Catholic churches in Austria are full of icon-like 'Gnadenbilder' (which might be crudely translated into English as miracle working pictures) - Maria Schnee in Seckau,Maria Trost in Graz,Maria Saal and Maria Rain in Carinthia,Maria Plain in Salzburg,Maria Potsch in the cathedral of Vienna.
I left out Mariazell as the centrepice there is not a 'Gnadenbild' but rather a tiny statue.
--
1Indeed this may be the only one.
Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit:
Now and ever and unto ages of ages. Amen.
Or am I confusing separate prayers?
Is it the general custom in Orthodoxy for a priest to say the Glory Now And Ever, wherever the words occur?
A lay person in the Anglican or RC churches would naturally say it at the end of the Psalms, Canticles etc., if they were leading Morning or Evening Prayer, whether privately or publicly.
Real life's a bugger and I didn't get in here for a few days ... well I thought I did but I certainly missed this thread and its OP ... mea culpa [my bad] but yes, please provide translations even of the most holy and sacred writ, liturgical or otherwise. And of funky Latinisms. Or I'll chuck Māorisms at youse all (for they are lingua franca [frankish toungue] in my neck of nga rakau [the woods])
/Hosting
We have not said it for many years now, just stopping while others mutter it. The theology of the debates on it is way above our heads. What does matter for us is that it was not included in the original, adopted at a Council of the church, and has not since then been adopted at such a Council. We know that in the last years of the Empire, the Ecumenical Patriarch, through delegates, did accept it, but even that has at least 2 problems. The first of course is that it was forced out by the need for military aid from the West to try to preserve the little left of Byzantium. Ignoring that, it was still not a council of the entire church - missed the Patriarchs of Antioch, Jerusalem and Alexandria for a start.
I too omit the"filoque" and all the rest of the words too.
Same here...
ETA: I generally don’t say the filioque either.
I think it went unnoticed except to the very adjacent.
Only if it is part of the prayer the priest is reading. If it's part of the people's prayers, they would say/sing it.
I think what is being referred to here is not the Gloria but the doxology at the end of the Our Father. At the Divine Liturgy, the prayer is sung by the people while at the hours it is prayed by a reader, but the doxology is always exclaimed by the priest alone. In the Byzantine rite, this is:
"For yours is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, now and ever, and to the ages of ages."
WITH the Sign of The Cross(+) every time the Trinity is Named ... One thing the Orthodox are NOT is *stingy* with blessings and beauty ...